Saturday, August 16, 2014

From ‘Bookless in Baghdad and other writings about reading’ by Shashi Tharoor

……..Gunther Grass, urging that ‘writers experience another
view of history’ and that ‘literature must refresh memory’

A British friend, asked to explain to a foreigner what made
England England, replied, ‘Cricket, Shakespeare, the BBC.’ Though so concise an
answer would be difficult ffor an Indian, it is impossible to imagine any
similar attempt to describe India that omits the Mahabharata. ……The Ramayana is
cited generally when ethical ideals are expected; the Mahabharata is referred
to when compromises are made, shady deals struck, promises dishonoured, battles
fought, disasters lamented.’

….the French dramatist who wrote Peter Brooke’s
‘international’ version of the epic, Jean Clause Carriere …wrote…. ‘This
immense poem which flows with the majesty of a great river, carries an
inexhaustible richness, which defies all structural, thematic, historical or
psychological analysis ….Layers of ramifications, sometimes contradictory, follow
up on one another and are interwoven without losing the central theme. That
theme is a threat; we live in a time of
destruction – everything points in the same direction.’ (Emphasis added)

I spent the rest of the panel discussion looking (to echo a
description of Bertie Wooster’s Uncle Tom) like a pterodactyl with a secret
sorrow.

Wodehouse …..I felt like one who had ‘drained the four-ale
of life and found a dead mouse at the bottom of the pewter’ (Sam the Sudden)

Much of [Malcolm] Muggeridge’s appeal, it must be said, lay
in his irreverence. Visiting Tokyo after the Second World War, he attended a
public appearance by Emperor Hirohito and described him as a ‘nervous, shy,
stuttering, pathetic figure, formerly god.’

[Malcolm Muggeridge] ‘What words will endure no writer can
know, but for those of us who have to struggle to find the time to write, that
motto remains an inspiration’

…Churchill cheerfully said that history would judge him
kindly because he intended to write it himself.

Pushkin….is not just immortal: he is recognized as the
creator of the modern Russian language and literature, no less, and as the
writer who has captured the Russian soul as no other writer has before or
since.

In his poem ‘The poet’s obligation’ Neruda had declared, ‘To
whoever is not listening to the sea / this Friday morning, to whoever is cooped
up / in house or office, factory or woman / or street or mine or dry prison
cell, / to him I come, and without speaking or looking / I arrive and open the
door of his prison.’

‘India,’ wrote the British historian E.P.Thompson, ‘is
perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. All the
convergent influences of the world run through this society …. There is not a
thought that is being thought in the West or East that is not active in some
Indian mind.’

Secularism in India does not mean irreligiousness, which
even avowedly atheist parties like the communists or the Dravida Munnetra
Kazagham have found unpopular among their voters; indeed, in Calcutta’s annual Durga
Puja, the youth wings of the communist parties compete with each other to put
up the most lavish Puja pandals or pavilions to the Goddess Durga. Rather, it
means, in the Indian tradition, multi-religiousness.

….the Indian identity celebrates diversity: if America is a
melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in
different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the
next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other
in making the meal a satisfying repast. Indian are used to multiple identities
and multiple loyalties, all coming together in allegiance to a larger idea of
India, an India which safeguards the common space available to each identity.

An astonishing 47 per cent of Detroiters, nearly one out of
two adults in the predominantly black city, are functionally illiterate. (By
way of comparison, the figure for Vietnam is 6.7 per cent.) Functional
illiteracy relates to the inability of an individual to use reading, writing
and computational skills in everyday life situations ….In the richest country
on earth, 23 per cent of adult Americans – 44 million men and women – cannot do
these things. Detroit is the worst case, but it’s only twice as bad as the rest
of the country……….understand the instructions for an antidote on a ordinary can
or cockroach poison ….read a life
insurance form… Nearly half of America’s adults cannot do these things. They
are, in effect, unequipped for life in a modern society. ….unlike in the developing
world, where illiteracy is predominantly a rural problem, in the US it occurs
overwhelmingly in the inner cities, with a heavy concentration among the poor
and those dependent on welfare.

‘To forgive time its sins,’ Tayyeb Mutanabi had written, ‘if
it maintains friendships and safeguards books.’ …. ‘A home without a library is
an arid desert.’